I went to a brand new Wal-Mart Super Center today and it was packed. As I walked in the door, I turned to grab a shopping cart – not one in sight. In turned around to find that the other cart corral was empty as well. NOT ONE CART, anywhere! So I walked down to the other end of the store, same result.

Realization #1: If you have parking spaces for 1000 cars, you should have 1000 carts. I shouldn’t have to go back into the parking lot to find one for myself (which I did, the first cart corral was empty as well).

Also, with 26 checkout lanes, you would think that with less than three weeks until Christmas on a Saturday afternoon, you would have as many lanes as possible open. When, if not today, would all 26 lanes be available for checkout? If most of them were open, I’d have less of an issue, but there were less than half available – a whopping 12.